Monday, March 20, 2006

TODAY the Fiji Times brings you the puzzle that has taken the world by storm. Sudoku has been around for more than 200 years, but only in the past 12 months has it become a worldwide craze. Don't be put off by the appearance of the puzzle. There are no mathematics involved, but rather a process of logical thinking and elimination.

So much for being able to lie on the beach and rest now. One of the last romantic islands have been hit by the craze!!

My wife, having been told by friends in Europe that Sudoku, the Japanese [1] number-grid puzzle, was all the rage there, asked me to find some Sudokus and teach her how to solve them. A Google search disclosed a website with billions of Sudoku puzzles, a Wikipedia article with the puzzle’s history and mathematics, and dozens of other sites which (as the little girl wrote in her book report) “told me more than I wanted to know.”

I tried a few Sudokus and found that they could be solved by logical inference without any guesswork. My wife caught on to the method quickly and is now happily puzzling away.

A very good article on other diversions other than sudoku, for people who cannot get their fix on Sudoku

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Miffed at Blogger

Guess it is okay for Blogger to remove my blogs - and then after 1+ month to say "oops, we are sorry" and by the way, someone has your old URL but here is another one you can use.

After I have built in all the traffic to the OLD one. It wasn't MY fault they removed my blog, it was Bloggers. I'm sorry, but that excuse of "sorry" doesn't cut it. People work hard on their blogs and if the service provider oops, then they should reobtain the old one back.

I have been using the old one for over 1 year now so I have some very loyal customers and then for Blogger to remove the blog and take 1+ month to get back to me is not fair to me nor the customers. I don't think they would like it their hosting provider came back to them after 1 month of turning off their hosting and saying sorry either.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The sudoku movement continues to grow, and there is a mini-industry springing up to sell the puzzle game in a variety of new forms.

Although sudoku has long been worked on paper, as a game of mathematical logic, it is perfectly suited for digital devices, which can easily be programmed with simple formulas that keep generating puzzles. Also, it is easy to play on a cellphone touch pad and can played anywhere in the world without translation.

Companies say they are seeing strong interest in their mobile sudoku games.

Howard Tomlinson, chief executive of mobile-game maker Astraware Ltd. estimates that there are dozens of different versions of mobile sudoku — roughly 20 or so for Palm and Windows Mobile devices alone. Astraware's sudoku game, with billions of puzzles, is currently the eighth most popular of some 20,000 software downloads that are available for Palm devices.

While Astraware's software is geared toward pricier multipurpose gadgets, Sudokumo.com recently launched a mobile sudoku game that can be downloaded to most cell phones. The company, based in Guildford, U.K., says it has sold 7,500 games worldwide. Sudokumo's mobile sudoku has tutoring tools that help players identify the correct answer or tell them when they've entered the wrong one.

Another article on the Sudoku craze - and now allows another way to play on your cell phone. As I mentioned before, seems there is no limit to how many items will play it...before you know it, you'll be playing sudoku on your coffee maker!!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Today, Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers, in an agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe, announced Go! Sudoku for the PSP (PlayStation Portable) system. Go! Sudoku is the addictive puzzle game that is taking the world by storm and will be released in North America in March 2006. Go! Sudoku, is an interactive experience that requires gamers to place numbers inside a grid so that every column, every row and every box contains the number one to nine only once. Go! Sudoku contains 1,000 puzzles in four single-player difficulty levels, along with many multiplayer modes. With customizable backgrounds and energizing music, Go! Sudoku brings the popular puzzle to a new level. "

Another Sudoku computer "game" (and using the word game loosely) that is coming out for the PSP. Seems there probably won't be a system (seems the Playstation 2 is the only one I know of that won't) that won't have this hottest craze!

Saturday, August 20, 2005

: "Getting in Tune with Sudoku Craze: Local man develops program, introduces a trend to the Times

By Danielle Sherry
Published on 8/19/2005

Marc Colello, a local chemical engineer, has always had a special talent for computer programming. So when his father, a retired math teacher, told him about a new numbers puzzle that was appearing in newspapers around New York, Colello was intrigued.

'My dad had always been a (New York) Daily News guy since I was little, and it came as a surprise when he switched to the (New York) Post,' Colello said. 'He explained that he was hooked on these new puzzles that the Post was running, and had therefore switched allegiances.'"

The rules of Number Place, which was first published in Dell Pencil Puzzles & Word Games, were simple: put digits one through nine across the 9x9 grid splattered with seemingly random numbers. Each digit can appear once in each row. The grid is then divided into 3x3"

* No number is repeated in a horizontal line.
* No number is repeated in a vertical line.
* No number is repeated in each 3 by 3 area.

AAS RecommendedAll SuDoKu puzzles start with a pre-populated grid for you to work from. And with simple rules like that, no flash interface needed, it’s no surprise that there has been a bit of an explosion of SuDoKu applications across the Symbian platforms. And up till SuDoKu Professional (from ZingMagic), they all followed roughly the same pattern. A grid where you could add numbers, a certain number of built in puzzles, and the ability to enter a puzzle by hand (be it from a newspaper, online web site, or anywhere else)."

A review of a Sudoku computer solver - like one is almost like all the rest out there...